One strategy that needs revision is the lecture. I love this piece from Math With Bad Drawings. It is an “origin fable” about how lectures came to be. Lectures were the way that professors and other instructors conveyed their ideas to their students before there were any other means of doing so. When it was too difficult to produce material to read or enough copies for the class before any form of recording could be made when the students were wealthy white men who going to run the world anyway. In fact, lecturing may be the oldest teaching strategy we have!
As I researched the effectiveness of lectures, I found many articles discussed how to deliver an effective lecture. The advice was almost always the same: have meaningful slides, using engaging questions, speak in an entertaining and dynamic manner, and so on. In other words, lecture is effective when it is accompanied by other effective techniques. Look at this website from Iowa State!
This article from Edtopia and this one from the Washington Post cite research that should make any educator reconsider the lecture. NPR reported about physics professors at Harvard and other colleges who realized that all they were doing was repeating what their teachers did and their students did not really understand the concepts. All they did was parrot back the lecture!
The NPR article is an extension of a fascinating radio documentary by American Radio Works called “Don’t Lecture Me” about college lecturing and a college that decided not to use them. If your hackles are up and you are feeling defensive about the lecture, I urge you to listen to this.
There is a place for lecture in education. Lectures, done well and done for brief amounts of time, can be a good teaching tool. As with many other areas, all generalizations are false: lectures are not universally problematic.
However, I will argue that the vast majority of lectures are ineffective because the lecturer is not using dynamic teaching techniques. According to research cited in the radio documentary referenced above, only about 10% of students will learn well from a lecture, and it is likely that those students would teach themselves the material no matter how it was presented. Is it possible that the people who most benefit from lectures are the lecturers (and perhaps the institutions they work for)?
The traditional college lecture in an enormous hall with hundreds of students feels like mass education gone horribly wrong. Let’s not even talk about the tuition cost to the students for such an experience. What is the rationale for not simply recording these lectures and allowing students to view them online? In fact, why not get all these lectures recorded and then allow the teachers to really teach or go do research?
Maybe there is something else going on here. Many students might love lecturing because it asks so little of them. They don’t have to do anything but listen – and sometimes not even that. I have had many students who prefer not to think, but to just repeat what the teacher said. It is easier.
If you visit a crowded lecture hall, you might see many students taking notes. You might see others surfing the web, texting, or doing other things. You might also see some who were sleeping. For many of these students, attending the lecture is performative anyway. The professor is only reading from a Powerpoint, which they later publish. Perhaps they even include notes. Students fully understand that they don’t need to see the show, they can just read the script. Is this a good use of their time and tuition dollars?
Lecturing does make teachers and professors feel professorial. It is great to get up before an audience and show off. It feels good to have children praise and adore you for your knowledge and wit. Of course, they also expect that you will pay them for their worship with grades, preferably good ones. It is fun to have fans, but let’s be honest, impressing children for ego gratification feels low indeed.
While brief and focused lectures may be necessary once in a while, teachers and students would be far better served if the classroom were a place where learning was interactive and engaging. We used to sit in a little red schoolhouse and write down our lessons with chalk on slates. We don’t do that anymore. Students now have access to every piece of information on the planet. Reciting it to them is far less useful than teaching them how to evaluate and create it.
Come down from your stage, teacher, and help kids to make their own meaning, forge their own education: more than that special 10% will benefit - and your lessons will have far-reaching impact.
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